Stylos is the blog of Jeff Riddle, a Reformed Baptist Pastor in North Garden, Virginia. The title "Stylos" is the Greek word for pillar. In 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul urges his readers to consider "how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar (stylos) and ground of the truth."

Friday, May 24, 2019

Let’s
return to that last statement of the risen Lord to the seven disciples by the Sea
of Tiberias, “Come and dine.”

Many
interpreters have found in this invitation overtones of the Eucharist, or the
Lord’s Supper, as a means of grace, even though the food here is not the bread
and cup, but the bread and fish.

That’s
possible, but rather than an invitation to the Lord’s table I think we can see
it more broadly as a general invitation to discipleship, to join in having that
nourishing and soul-satisfying communion with Christ, which includes being part
of God’s people, that fellowship which Christ has built and to which the
apostles and those who have come after have added in his name.

Come
and enjoy. Come and be fed. Come and be ministered unto by the risen Christ
himself. Christ satisfies the hungry soul. Christ fills the empty life. Christ
gives rest to the weary. Come and dine.

Christ’s
statement might be described as the New Covenant equivalent to Isaiah 55:1: “Ho,
everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come
ye, buy, and eat: yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

And
to Psalm 34:8: “O taste and see that
the Lord is
good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.”

And
it anticipates that ultimate communion which is to come: “Blessed are they which are called unto the
marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 16:9).

Last weekend we enjoyed our annual Youth Conference at the Machen Retreat Center in beautiful Highland County, Virginia.

This year's theme was "Understanding the Doctrine of the Trinity" and I had the privilege of teaching the young people. Unfortunately, we did not do an audio recording of the sessions, but here are the four session topics and links to the teaching handouts given the participants:

We also had a lively Q & A at the end with some very insightful questions. Aside from the teaching, there was also time for fellowship. recreation, and the annual "Chopped" dessert competition (Reformed Youth edition).

This episode shares an interview
posted to Robert Truelove's youtube channel on May 16, 2019 and is shared with
his permission (watch
the video here). Pooyan Mehrshahi is pastor of
Providence Baptist Chapel in Cheltenham, England (listen to his sermons and teaching here). He is also engaged in ministry to Farsi speaking people
through the Parsa Trust (look here and here).

The podcast addresses the challenge
made by some modern text advocates that adoption of the confessional text means
the supposed abandonment of meaningful apologetics, especially with Muslims.
Pastor Pooyan ably points out that this challenge is groundless, and, in fact, it is the modern critical text position that proves problematic in apologetics.

Friday, May 17, 2019

The other disciples
therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I
shall see in his hands the print [typos] of the nails, and put my finger into
the into the print [typos] of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I
will not believe” (John 20:25).

We know the disciple Thomas as “Doubting Thomas” because of
the skepticism he expressed when his fellow disciples told him, “We have seen
the Lord” (John 20:25).

Thomas had not been present on that first Lord’s Day evening
when Christ “stood in the midst” as they assembled behind closed doors (v. 19).
He was incredulous. Sometimes modern people suggest that the whole reason Christianity
took root in the first century is because the people of that age were simply religiously
naïve, superstitious, and unsophisticated. They didn’t have our modern
refinement and rationalism. But people are people, in the first century as now.
They have reason and common sense, drawn from ordinary experience. They knew
then as we know now that dead men stay dead. It is unsurprising then that Thomas
did not immediately believe the report of his fellows.

We have the expression, seeing is believing. In Thomas’s case
seeing and touching is believing. He said he wanted verifiable, empirical
evidence of the reality of the resurrection, or he would remain in unbelief
about it.

Then, on the second Lord’s Day evening, Christ again “stood
in the midst” of the disciples and invited Thomas to place his finger in his
nail pierced hands, and his hand in his riven side (vv. 26-27). He gave Thomas
the exhortation: “and be not faithless, but believing [kai mē ginou apistos, allas
pistos]” (v. 27).

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

A new installment is posted to the series on Eusebius of Caesarea’s The
Ecclesiastical History: book 2, chapter 18 (listen here).

Notes and Commentary:

Eusebius here surveys the various writings of the respected Jewish
philosopher, stateman, and author Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC-AD 50), a rough
contemporary of both Jesus and Paul.

He notes that Philo wrote on various spiritual and mundane
topics, including allegorical expositions of the Hebrew Bible.

He again notes Philo’s famed trip to Rome during the reign
of Caius Caesar (Caligula) and also notes that during the reign of Caius’s successor, Claudius, Philo described Caligula's impiety in an ironically titled work “Concerning Virtues”, which
he read before the Senate.

He also notes Claudius’s expulsion of Jews from Rome, a detail
noted in Acts 18:2 that led to Aquila and Priscilla being in Corinth, where they became hosts to Paul.

Eusebius has a high view of the book of Acts, referring to it
as “sacred Scripture.”

Friday, May 10, 2019

Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the
week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the
Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you
(John 20:19).

In
Christ’s appearance to his disciples on the first resurrection Sunday evening,
we have a pattern for what still happens in the assemblies of God’s people.

Admittedly,
Christ is not present physically now as he was in that forty-day period after
his resurrection and before his ascension, but he is nonetheless present by
means of the Spirit.

When
we gather as God’s people, Christ stands in our midst. We cannot see him, hear
him, touch him, but he is not less present. Our winsomeness as an assembly
comes not through who we are but through the one who stands in our midst.

There
is something more powerful that happens when we come together than when any of
us is alone in private devotion.

Christ
offers peace to us, as he promised his original disciples in John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not
as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither
let it be afraid.’

He
also gives us proofs and evidences of the truth and reality of who he is and
what he has done. On that first Lord’s Day evening “he shewed unto them his
hands and his side” (John 20:20) Now, he gives us proofs by the reading and
preaching of his Word.

On
that first Lord’s Day evening he commissioned his disciples, “as my Father hath sent me, even so send I
you” (John 20:21). He still sends us out into the world to be his witnesses. He
also gives us, as he did the first disciples, the Holy Spirit to empower our
ministry (John 20:22).

Finally,
he reminds us of the authority granted to us as the church founded by the apostles
on Christ the chief cornerstone: to announce forgiveness of sin and to evaluate
and condemn sin that is retained (cf. John 20:23).

We
are still assembling on the first day of the week, and Christ is still coming
to stand in our midst.

Tuesday, May 07, 2019

Image: Modern entrance to the Coptic Orthodox Monastery of St. Anthony in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. It is considered by many to be the oldest Christian monastery in the world, founded c. 251.

A new installment is posted to the series on Eusebius of Caesarea’s The
Ecclesiastical History: book 2, chapters 16-17 (listen here).

Notes and Commentary:

Eusebius begins by relaying the tradition that Mark was the first
to take the gospel to Alexandria, Egypt, before he went to Rome to be with
Peter and to compose his Gospel.

Eusebius then draws on Philo of Alexandria’s work On the Contemplative Life and his description
of the Therapeutae, an ascetic spiritual group near Alexandria.

Eusebius claims that the Therapeutae were, in fact, a
Christian sect. Like the early Christians described in Acts they gave up their possessions
and held their goods in common in order to follow their “philosophy.” He describes
their practices of fasting and their allegorical interpretations of their
Scriptures. He assumes their sacred Scriptures to have included the Gospels,
the writings of the Apostles, and expositions of the prophets, like those found
in Hebrews (which he assumes was written by Paul). He emphasizes the extremes
of their fasting with some not eating for three days or barely eating over six
days.

Eusebius acknowledges that some might be skeptical of his claim
that the Therapeutae were Christians. Indeed, most would see them as a Jewish
sect.

He further notes that men and women lived separately and practiced
chastity. They also followed patterns (like fasting and keeping vigils to
celebrate “the Passion of the Savior”) and practices, which Eusebius says, were
still followed by Christians in his day.

Though his claims that the Therapeutae were Christians seems
dubious, the description shows the developing interest in early Christianity in
monasticism and ascetical spiritual practices like chastity and fasting.

Sunday, May 05, 2019

A new installment has been posted to the series on Eusebius of Caesarea’s The
Ecclesiastical History: book 2, chapters 13-15 (listen here).

Notes and Commentary:

Eusebius here focuses on a tradition of Simon the Samaritan
sorcerer, a false convert from Acts 8:9-25 as an arch-heretic who eventually
settled in Rome.

He describes Simon as a demon-possessed magician who was fancied
a god by his followers. He suggests that a statue to him was raised in Rome.
Lake notes that Eusebius is likely in error here, suggesting that the statue,
discovered in 1574, was inscribed not “to Simon a holy god” but “to the god
Semo Sanctus” [Semo Sanctus being a Sabine deity].

Simon’s companion was a woman named Helena, whom Eusebius
suggests was a former prostitute and whom Simon called the “First Idea” from
him [a pseudo-Platonic or Gnostic concept].

Eusebius cites Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyons as his
sources for these traditions of Simon as “the first author of all heresy.”

He notes that the false practices of Simon and Helena
includes being “thrown into marvel” [ecstatic spiritual experiences] and indecent
sexual conduct.

If Simon was the arch-villain, the hero was Peter, the leader
of the Apostles, who came to Rome “like a noble captain of God” to preach the
gospel and refute heresy.

He suggests that the Romans encouraged Mark, “Peter’s follower,”
to compose the Gospel of Mark, written in Rome and commended by the Apostle. He
also cites Papias for the tradition of Mark being written in Rome and his
reference to Mark in 1 Peter 5:13, as well as the reference there to “Babylon”
as a code term for Rome.

Friday, May 03, 2019

John 20:17 Jesus saith unto her,
Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren,
and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God and
your God. 18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the
Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.

The first
resurrection appearance was to Mary Magdalene (cf. Mark 16:9).

Christ’s word
to Mary Magdalene In John 20:17 constitute one of the most intriguing and
perhaps difficult to understand statements of the risen Jesus. Ryle says, “No
doubt the language is somewhat mysterious and ought to be delicately and
reverently handled.”

Why did the
risen Christ ask Mary not to touch him?

What is this
reference to his ascending to the Father? Was there a preliminary ascension to
the Father after his resurrection and a return to appear for forty days before
his final ascension?

Was Mary as
a woman disciple and non-apostle forbidden to touch him, while only the twelve were
given the privilege of handling his body, including touching hid wounds, as
Thomas did (see 20:27)?

What is
being conveyed here?

It is
unlikely that this is a reference to “two ascensions” since such a thing is not
mentioned anywhere else in the Scriptures.

Many take
the point as being simply to communicate to Mary not that he could not be
touched at all but that his body had been changed. This is no longer his earthly
body but his heavenly, resurrection body. His physical presence in their midst
is only temporary, until such time as he ascends to be seated at the right hand
of the Father. It thus points forward to the reality of the age in which we now
live as disciples, wherein we cannot physically touch Christ with the hand,
hear him with the ear, see him with the eye, and yet we do hear his voice in
the Word, and we believe.

Christ then
commissions Mary to go to the apostles and to tell them both of his
resurrection and his ascension.

Mary obeyed
this command (v. 18). This is an evidence of her faithfulness, for which she
was remembered by the early Christians and often called by them, “the apostle
to the apostles.”

In appearing
first to Mary Magdalene Christ, in part, demonstrated the importance and value
of women disciples. Women were not called to be apostles. They are not called
today to be elders or deacons. But they are called to believe in the
resurrection, to obey Christ, and to serve the Lord in their own spheres of
influence.

Wednesday, May 01, 2019

A new installment has been posted to the series on Eusebius of Caesarea’s The
Ecclesiastical History: book 2, chapters 11-12 (listen here).

Notes and Commentary:

Eusebius here makes reference to the speech of Gamaliel in
Acts 5, in which the respected teacher describes a contemporary uprising under
a man named Theudas that eventually came to nothing (see Acts 5:34-36).
Gamaliel’s conclusion is that if the nascent Christian movement is not of God
it will come to nothing, but if it is of God one can do nothing to stop it (Acts
5:38-39).

Eusebius compares the account in Acts with that in Josephus,
describing how the Roman governor Fadus sent a squad a cavalry to attack Theudas’s
followers at the Jordan river and killed many, including Theudas himself.

This is a reminder of the uncertain political times in which Jesus
and the apostles lived and how the Romans would have treated religious
movements they saw as a threat.

Eusebius closes by making mention of the famine in Judea at
the time of Claudius, recorded by Josephus and also mentioned by Luke in Acts
11. He notes Josephus’s mention of Queen Helena of the nation of Adiabene, to
which, he says, monuments still exist outside Aelia (Jerusalem). This reference
to Jerusalem as Aelia is a reminder of that city’s destruction by the Romans
and eventual re-naming after two unsuccessful revolts (AD 66-70 and AD 132-136
[the Bar Kochba Revolt]).

Eusebius continues to use Josephus to affirm the historical
reliability of Acts.

His description of Theudas is also a reminder of the volatile
times in which Christianity emerged in the Roman Empire.

Friday, April 26, 2019

Then went in also that
other disciple, which came first to the sepulcher, and he saw and believed
(John 20:8).

This verse describes the entry of John, the beloved disciple,
into the tomb, after Peter had already entered (see vv. 6-7). It is key to
understanding the empty tomb. John records, in the third person, his own experience:
“and he saw and believed [had faith].” This is John’s record of his own testimony.

Early in his ministry the Lord Jesus had asked the two
disciples of John the Baptist who began following him, “What seek ye?” (1:38)
and then he had said to them, “Come and see” (v. 39). This is the invitation
extended to any who would consider Christ. Come and see.

John came to the empty tomb, he saw, and he believed [had
faith]. What did he believe? He believed that the tomb was empty, that Jesus
had been gloriously raised from the dead. He believed that Christ had
experienced the resurrection, that his life had been vindicated by the Father. In
believing this, he also came to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God. Peter had confessed this earlier: “And we believe and are sure that thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (John 6:69). John had been a follower
of Jesus before these things, and it is difficult to quantify the degree of
change that took place at the empty tomb, but something fundamentally changed
for John in light of the evidence and revelation of the resurrection. John was
a changed man.

Through God’s own word an invitation is extended to all
hearers to stoop and look into the empty tomb. Christ is saying, Come and see.
Come and experience.

If any have wavered, now is the time to get off the fence and
close with Christ. Psalm 34:8: “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed
is the man that trusteth in him.”

How important is the resurrection as an article of faith? In
Romans 10:9 Paul said, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord
Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead,
thou shalt be saved.” It is crucial. It is essential. Come, see, and believe.

Image: Coins from the era of Herod Agrippa I (10 BC-AD 44). Herod ruled as King of Judea from c. AD 41-44.

Another installment is posted to the series from Eusebius of Caesarea’s The
Ecclesiastical History: book 2, chapter 10 (listen here).

Notes and Commentary:

The focus of this chapter is the death of Herod Agrippa I,
the same who put to death James the apostle and brother of John and son of
Zebedee (just as earlier in EH, 1.8 he had described the gruesome death of
Herod the Great, the grandfather of Herod Agrippa I).

Eusebius says this Herod was overtaken by God because of his
plot against the apostles.

He notes the account in Acts 12 of how Herod was flattered by
the crowd who said he spoke with the voice of a god and not as a man, and how
he was then struck down by an angel, eaten of worms, and died.

He compares also the parallel account in book 19 of Josephus’s Antiquities, noting how each corroborates
the other and marvels: “I am surprised how in this and other points Josephus
confirms the truth of the divine Scriptures.”

Once again, Eusebius stresses the theme of the justice of
God. Those who oppose the purposes of God in the Christian movement pay the penalty.

He also stresses the historicity of Acts by showing how the
facts relayed are supported by Josephus.

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Another installment has been added to the series on Eusebius of Caesarea’s The
Ecclesiastical History: Book 2, chapters 7-9 (listen here).

Notes and Commentary:

In chapter 7 Eusebius relays a tradition that Pilate
committed suicide and that this came as a penalty from God.

He mentions a source (the records of the Olympiads of the
Greeks) but Lake notes, “No extant records confirm this statement.”

In chapters 8-9, he summarizes material taken from Acts
chapters 11-12.

This includes events that happened under the reign of the
emperor Claudius, including the famine foretold by the prophet Agabus.

He also relays the account of the death of James the apostle
under Herod from Acts 12:1-2 and adds an account from Clement about a soldier
who was converted during James’s trial and who was executed with him.

He notes also the arrest of Peter from Acts 12.

We see here again Eusebius’s use of Acts as a trustworthy
source and his supplementing of it with extra information. We see also his
desire to set the Christian movement against the wider backdrop of Roman
history.

Monday, April 22, 2019

The first part is a review of some of the upcoming changes to the New American Standard Bible (NASB), coming in 2020. See my notes for Part One here.

The second part is a suggested analogy between the fire/reconstruction of Notre Dame and the TR. Below are my notes for Part Two:

This article is an attempt to draw an analogy between the destruction
and proposed restoration of the Notre Dame Cathedral and the traditional text
of Scripture.

One of the biggest news stories this week was, for course,
the fire that destroyed a substantial part of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
(on Monday, April 15, 2019). The source of the fire is still unexplained,
though online rumors have run rampant about the possibility that it might have
intentional act of arson or terrorism. Over the last year there have apparently
been hundreds of acts of vandalism against French churches and Christian
religious objects. One would have to be particularly dull not to be suspicious
of the fact that the fire occurred during the so-called “holy week” leading up
to Easter Sunday.

It is hard not to see symbolic significance in the damage done
to this church, which had long been an icon of the Christian and RC heritage of
France. I wonder how many poems will be written that memorialize this fire as a
reflection of demographic, political, and religious changes in France and the
West as it enters a post-modern and post-Christian era.

In a much-discussed online Rolling Stone article, posted the day after the fire and titled “How
Should France Rebuild Notre Dame?”, EJ Dickson notes that the fire did not
end up doing as much damage as some initially feared. He cites Jeffrey Hamburger,
a Harvard art historian:

The
fact that the building did not collapse — a concern in the hours immediately
following the blaze — serves as a “powerful testimony to the skill of medieval
builders,” Hamburger says. He credits the survival of the structure to the
building’s iconic rib vaulting and flying buttresses, which prevented collapse.
“It’s worth remembering why they went through the trouble building it this way
— it wasn’t for aesthetic reasons, it was for fire-proofing,” Hamburger says.
“In a way, what we have here is proof of concept.”

After noting the building’s role in French history and the
fact that it serves as the “Point Zero” or supposed center of the city of
Paris, the article offered this startling observation:

But for
some people in France, Notre Dame has also served as a deep-seated symbol of
resentment, a monument to a deeply flawed institution and an idealized
Christian European France that arguably never existed in the first place. “The
building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of
liberation,” says Patricio del Real, an architecture historian at Harvard
University.

The
article also discusses the very difficult question of how the reconstruction of
the cathedral should proceed. The cathedral began to be built in 1160 and was
completed a hundred years later in 1260. It was built on a site that had
previously held not only a fourth century Christian church but also on a site
where a Roman temple to Jupiter was once situated. Over the years various
additions and renovations were added, including a spire (now destroyed by the fire),
in the nineteenth century.

With
regard to reconstruction, the question arises as to which church should be
reconstructed. The original completed in 1260? The church as it stood in April
2019? Should, for example, the spire be restored or left out? Should it be modernized
with contemporary innovations and features? There is also the realization that
no exact reproduction can be achieved in our day. We simply do not have the
skilled workmen and artisans today who completed the original work by hand
using pre-modern methods. We cannot do today what was done then.

Here
is another quote from the conclusion of the RS article:

Although Macron and
donors like Pinault have emphasized that the cathedral should be rebuilt as
close to the original as possible, some architectural historians like Brigniani
[an architecture professor at the City College of New York] believe that would
be complicated, given the many stages of the cathedral’s evolution. “The
question becomes, which Notre Dame are you actually rebuilding?” he says.
Harwood [architecture professor at the University of Toronto], too, believes
that it would be a mistake to try to recreate the edifice as it once stood, as
LeDuc did more than 150 years ago. Any rebuilding should be a reflection not of
an old France, or the France that never was — a non-secular, white European
France — but a reflection of the France of today, a France that is currently in
the making. “The idea that you can recreate the building is naive. It is to
repeat past errors, category errors of thought, and one has to imagine that if
anything is done to the building it has to be an expression of what we want —
the Catholics of France, the French people — want. What is an expression of who
we are now? What does it represent, who is it for?” he says.

Hamburger, however, dismisses this idea as
“preposterous.” Now that the full extent of the damage is being reckoned with —
and is less than many initially feared — he sees no reason to not try to
rebuild and preserve one of the few remaining wonders of medieval architecture.
“It’s not as if in rebuilding the church one is necessarily building a monument
to the glorification of medieval catholicism and aristocracy. It’s simply the
case that the building has witnessed the entire history of France as a modern
nation,” he says. “[You] can’t just erase history. It’s there, and it has to be
dealt with critically.”

So, why this reflection on Notre Dame de Paris? Certainly it is
intriguing on many levels. What it brought to my mind, given the general
interest of this podcast in the text and translation of Scripture, are the parallels
that might be suggested between Notre Dame and the traditional text of Scripture
(the Hebrew Masoretic Text of the OT and the Greek TR of the NT).

The traditional text of Scripture is not a physical edifice,
like Notre Dame, but it is a priceless literary artifact that reflects the
history and heritage of Christianity in both the West and the East. One might
say that Notre Dame was there for some nine-hundred years, and the traditional
text only represents a printed tradition of some five-hundred years. Even if we
granted only a five-hundred-year span for the traditional text, that would be
significant, but, in fact, we might just as well cogently argue that its legacy
extends even further back. The Masoretic text goes back to Ezra and the TR reflects
a predominant, organic ecclesiastical consensus largely present in the Byzantine
tradition and confirmed by the Protestant orthodox in the Reformation and
post-Reformation eras that, we might argue, goes back to the apostles. So, in fact,
while Notre Dame has only a nine-hundred-year history, the traditional text has
stood for over two thousand years.

To continue the analogy, we were told that this text had been
severely damaged through blazing corruptions and errors in transmission from
some unknown sources. In hindsight, however, many now fear that the damage might
have been done from inside out by post-Enlightenment scholars who saw the
traditional text as a monument of a bygone era, whose significance was eclipsed
by modern “advances.” Such scholars likely saw the traditional text as the
historian in the RS article says that some modern Parisians saw the Notre Dame,
as “a
deep-seated symbol of resentment, a monument to a deeply flawed institution … that
arguably never existed in the first place.” Many, no doubt, saw and stillsee the toppling of the traditional text
as a “liberation.”

Despite claims of its total collapse under what can only be
described as the withering claims of modern criticism, further examination shows
that the structure actually stands up still quite well, a testimony to the “proof
of concept” not only of the inspired writers but also of the providentially
guided tradents of the text. It still serves quite well as a “Point Zero” for finding
the true center for Christian faith and practice.

While some would still suggest undertaking radical reconstruction
to get back to the as yet undefined and elusive original, others suggest that
the moment to be seized for making supposed modern updates and improvements. To
borrow again from a scholar in the article, one might observe, “The question becomes, which [text of
Christian Scripture] are you actually rebuilding?” The traditionalist,
however, rightly recognizes that such an undertaking is fraught with difficulties
and unintended consequences. For starters, we simply do not have the artisans
and skilled laborers to undertake such a task. We cannot do now what a previous
generation so expertly did under divine providence. Our attempts to tinker with
and improve might be devastating for its preservation for future generations.

Of course, this analogy breaks down. Notre Dame has been severely
damaged, and it will need to be repaired. The traditional text, however, though
under intense assault, has not yet been consigned to the flames. To both the
chagrin and wonder of many, it still stands as a monument to God’s immediate
inspiration of his Word and his providential preservation of it. It does not need
repair or replacement, but appreciation and admiration.